Psychology Movie

    The movie I Am Sam is about a mentally disabled man who tries to take care of his normal daughter.  Sam is the father and he only has a learning capability of a seven year old.  As his sweet little daughter, Lucy, gets older and learns more in school, she doesn't want to be able to read words that her father is unable to comprehend.  Her school notices that she is literally refusing to learn, and as a result, they think that Sam cannot take care of Lucy as she gets older, and calls child services to take her away to a foster home.  Sam and all of his friends are devastated by this, so they try to find a lawyer to win Lucy back.  They find Rita Harrison in the phone book, but she is too expensive.  Even so, Sam goes to talk to Rita and after some persuasion and guilty feelings, Rita unwillingly agrees to help Sam try to win Lucy back for free.  At first, the lawyer is uptight, cold, and didn't seem to feel any emotions, but eventually, Sam helps Rita as much as she helps him, and she becomes warmer and happier.  Sam, Rita, and Sam's friends all go to trial to get Lucy back so they will both be happy and live together again.
    There are many parts of this movie that fit into psychology.  Foremost, Sam has a mental disability which limits him to being unable to comprehend, learn, or understand a lot of things.  He is able to hold a job and work at Starbucks, and he always arranges the sugar in the sugar baskets perfectly by color.  Also, whenever someone orders a cup of coffee, he has the memory to remember exactly what that person ordered and who ordered it.  Furthermore, Sam did not like to do something different than what he was used to.  For example, Lucy, Sam, and his friends always go to the restaurant IHOP on Wednesday nights.  Lucy asked if they could go to a different restaurant on Wednesday instead of IHOP, but Sam wouldn't go because he didn't want to break his weekly routine.  Sam and his friends also had other things like this in their weekly routine that they all wanted to keep the same, like other restaurants they always go to on specific nights, and they always go to the same person's house one day every week for movie night.  Many of Sam's friends also had mental disabilities.  One of Sam's friends had Down's Syndrome and another was able to reference specific movies, the director of the movie, and the year the movie was made.  Another one of Sam's friends was paranoid about almost everything.  He worried a lot about the government and when Rita was using a tape recorder for the interview for Lucy's trial, he wouldn't say anything for fear of who was listening.  Additionally, Sam's neighbor, Annie, had agoraphobia, or fear of leaving the house.  One night when Lucy was a baby, Sam wasn't able to make her stop crying, and Annie said that she couldn't go over to help, but Sam could come to her apartment.  However, Annie was able to face her fear and leave the house when she came to Sam's trial to testify for him.  The day of the trial was the first day in many years that Annie had stepped foot outside of her home.  Furthermore, it is revealed that Annie's father could've been abusive or something along those lines when she was a child, which could've impacted Annie's fear of leaving her house later in her life.  Lastly, the movie does a great job of showing the world through Sam's eyes.  It shows the way a person with a mental disability might think and specifically, it shows the confusion Sam has to go through in many simple everyday tasks.  I Am Sam is an incredibly inspirational movie that shows that anything is possible, even if you have a disability.










I Am Sam Trailer

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